GIF Experiments: 20 (World’s Greatest Guard Dog)
The ‘Guard Dog’ above is absurd on an obvious level. He’s clearly a harmless creature not a guard dog. Yet he is the World’s Greatest Guard Dog. Absurd. Or maybe the treasure he is guarding only needs a tiny woof and it will hide itself. I don’t know – maybe. I like to think the DADA artists might have chuckled at this little guy expected to be, or pretending to be, fierce. I’ve read they enjoyed the chaos of Keystone Cops movies and of course Charlie Chaplin. John Heartfield and the DADA artists created not only wildly inventive and acerbic commentaries on war – war profiteering – and class privilege but did so with scathing absurdist humour. Heartfield lived in a dangerous time. His artistic satire put him in great danger.
